The Australia government has placed bans on the importation of apples raised from certain orchards in New Zealand unless the apples meet two conditions that the Australia government required. Australia says that these two conditions must be imposed if Australia orchards are to be protected from the diseases and pests.
New Zealand government complains that Australia measures do not comply with the requirements of WTO, including the GATT 1994(1947) and the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measure (SPS). Both of Australia and New Zealand are the members of WTO.
In this case, Actions of Australia might have contravened GATT article I, III and XI. The bans on the importation of apples from New Zealand also do not conform to the SPS Agreement.
GATT
The GATT applies to measures that affect the fairness of trade in products. In this case, apples are the products and those two conditions that Australia required are the unfair measures.
Article I
Article I requires members to give a fair treatment to the products of all members of the WTO. Article I(1) also set up the concept of “Most Fvoured Nation”. MFN is a standard of non-discrimination between different nations. It means that the measures must not give any less favourable treatment to the product of one member than that they give to the like products of other members.
In the present condition, to decide whether Australia has contravened this provision, I would need to know whether Australia have banned like products from other countries as well as New Zealand. In the statement of this case, there are not enough evidences to prove that Australia banned the importation of apples from other countries as well as New Zealand. So whether Australia contravenes Article I depe ...